‘You cannot tell how much that letter has affected me. You cannot know what thoughts and impulses it has aroused. But you can believe that in my mother’s blunder I read my own fate.... I know you are my friend: be the friend of those I love. Help him, for he needs help very much.’
Mr Beecham had quietly taken the letter and placed it in a small pocket-case, to which it seemed to belong.
‘I feared you would not understand me, and the desire to save you from uneasiness has brought me here. You have promised to be silent: I again beg you to keep that promise for a little while.’
She bowed her head, but did not speak.
‘In doing so,’ he added, anxious to reassure her, ‘you have my pledge that no harm will come to any one who does not seek it.’
‘You cannot think,’ she said coldly, and yet with a touch of bitterness that she seemed unable to repress—‘you cannot think any one purposely seeks harm! It came to you and to my mother.’
For an instant he was silent. He was thinking that no harm would have come to them if both had been faithful.
‘That is a hard hit, and not easily answered,’ he said quietly. ‘Let me say, then, that even if there had been no other motive to influence me, I should be his friend on your account. But I am your friend above and before all. For your sake alone I came back to England. For your sake I am acting as I am doing, strange as it may seem. If he is honest and faithful to you’——
‘There is no doubt of that,’ she interrupted, her face brightening with confidence.
Beecham inclined his head, as if in worship. He smiled at her unhesitating assertion of faith, but the smile was one of respect and admiration touched with a shade of regret. What might his life have been if he had found a mate like her! The man she loved might prove false, and all the world might call him false: she would still believe him to be true.